"Even today," Derrida said, "the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself" ("Structure" 115) - this is chaos. We believe in the need for meaning as a basis for the "moral" choices we make; without the "transcendental signifier" we are alone with our own will, with no one to blame when the choices go wrong.
A student told me he wished we could all be blasted back to the Stone Age. He said he was just bored - but maybe he's searching for purpose in a generation being taught reality is found on MTV and survival is a game with only one winner per season. This student and others display a startling lack of connection to Foucault's "historical knowledge of struggles" (Foucault 129).
Jameson says Foucault's theory of "genealogy" makes a clear statement for a nonlinear history ("Postmodern" 269), but our modern cultural history is being deconstructed one episode at a time, giving the illusion of a linear, repeating history that restarts itself at the beginning of every new season. Jameson's "frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods" (270) has led to a reality-show mentality of relationship parodies and communities that last only until we vote someone else off the island to save ourselves.
Though Foucault argued the "endlessly repeated [definition of power as repression]" (134) is "wholly inadequate to the analysis" of power (135), I have to respectfully disagree. Merriam-Webster online defines repression as that which "[prevents] the natural or normal expression, activity or development." What we have right now is a generation repressed, seeking to deconstruct its own society "back to the Stone Age" - a generation to which chaos seems like a viable alternative.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Derrida's Garme...Or, All the Theory in Ft. Knox
Peter Barry reminds us of something we all understand as we get older: rebellion often begins when we "accuse [our] predecessors [our elders] of not having the courage of their convictions" (Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 57). Jacques Derrida, revels in the childish rebellion in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." He calls linguistic theory a "game" and the nonstandard manipulation of language "freeplay" (116).
He bases his arguments (his rebellion) on the idea that language has no inherent ("transcendental or privileged" (117)) meaning. Concluding, therefore, that the organized structure of language can have "no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing" (Barry, 57). There is no linguistic reality except that which we create, which, by our own (standard) definition, means it's not real at all.
Everything we know or have learned through language, then, is construct - not a particularly arguable thought for either Structuralists or Post-Structuralists. In fact, Barry differentiates between the attitude of the two not by whether or not they buy into constructed language as a concept, but by whether or not they are willing to accept it as a foundation for defining meaning (61)regardless. For Post-Structuralists, says Barry, language is too "liquid" to rely on even provisionally (62).
But, Derrida defines it as a game - possibly a "quasi-religious" game(Barry 65) from which he and his compatriots derive "a certain masochistic, intellectual pleasure" (Barry, 61) - but, still, just a game. The pieces are signifiers and are moved around in hopes of disproving any hypothetical center that can be defined by the language that creates them. But, even Derrida understands we can't "[refuse the concept]" of sign and signifier completely (Derrida, 117).
We can choose to play with the difference between signifier and signified - that is, we can know that the word "tree" is not the same as the actual concrete, sensually recognized entity which is created outside of our minds, therefore outside of our language - but that doesn't negate the fact that, until an as yet undiscovered alternative comes along, we will continue to use systems of language to communicate using the word "tree" to describe certain plant life - even when it means communicating about what it is or isn't actually being communicated.
Theory is a form of mental gymnastics - Post-Structuralists like Jacques Derrida acknowledge and play with this fact. Now that he has gone, however, into a place "as yet unnameable" to the rest of us, we might never know if he took the game seriously or is now laughing as we try desperately to figure out what sort of "formless, mute, infant" monster he was attempting to give birth to (Derrida, 119).
He bases his arguments (his rebellion) on the idea that language has no inherent ("transcendental or privileged" (117)) meaning. Concluding, therefore, that the organized structure of language can have "no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing" (Barry, 57). There is no linguistic reality except that which we create, which, by our own (standard) definition, means it's not real at all.
Everything we know or have learned through language, then, is construct - not a particularly arguable thought for either Structuralists or Post-Structuralists. In fact, Barry differentiates between the attitude of the two not by whether or not they buy into constructed language as a concept, but by whether or not they are willing to accept it as a foundation for defining meaning (61)regardless. For Post-Structuralists, says Barry, language is too "liquid" to rely on even provisionally (62).
But, Derrida defines it as a game - possibly a "quasi-religious" game(Barry 65) from which he and his compatriots derive "a certain masochistic, intellectual pleasure" (Barry, 61) - but, still, just a game. The pieces are signifiers and are moved around in hopes of disproving any hypothetical center that can be defined by the language that creates them. But, even Derrida understands we can't "[refuse the concept]" of sign and signifier completely (Derrida, 117).
We can choose to play with the difference between signifier and signified - that is, we can know that the word "tree" is not the same as the actual concrete, sensually recognized entity which is created outside of our minds, therefore outside of our language - but that doesn't negate the fact that, until an as yet undiscovered alternative comes along, we will continue to use systems of language to communicate using the word "tree" to describe certain plant life - even when it means communicating about what it is or isn't actually being communicated.
Theory is a form of mental gymnastics - Post-Structuralists like Jacques Derrida acknowledge and play with this fact. Now that he has gone, however, into a place "as yet unnameable" to the rest of us, we might never know if he took the game seriously or is now laughing as we try desperately to figure out what sort of "formless, mute, infant" monster he was attempting to give birth to (Derrida, 119).
Sunday, September 20, 2009
There Are Always (@ Least) 2 Sides
In a very Augustinian approach, Peter Barry wishes to give a "clear explanation and demonstration" (1) of the art and importance of literary theory. He also wants to help the reader (student) "make some personal sense of theory"(2), wonderful for someone who has always believed a personal sense of literary interpretation is all we can honestly claim.
As Morse Peckham points out - even the New Critics are "governed by an ideology of which the practitioners are themselves unaware" (111). I love a good "close reading." Like Barry, I find "intensive reading [often] more useful than extensive reading"(4); however,I can't lie and say I don't sometimes find Formalist theory full of "meaningless, pretentious jargon" (7).
On the other hand, though I agree with Jonathan Culler that "literature is a form of communication" (100) - and we should all be talking in one form or another - when we can hardly claim to know our own individual minds, how on earth can we judge the one true meaning for literary texts written by those we will probably never meet?
An even-handed statement, then, from Cleanth Brooks spoke with the loudest and clearest voice this week:
The various imports of a given work may well be worth studying. ...But such work, valuable and necessary as it may be, is to be distinguished from a criticism of the work itself" (28).
We must examine texts for what they add to the on-going human dialogue, but we must not forget to simply appreciate literature (and all forms of art) for what it may potentially add to the on-going dialogue we have with our own soul.
As Morse Peckham points out - even the New Critics are "governed by an ideology of which the practitioners are themselves unaware" (111). I love a good "close reading." Like Barry, I find "intensive reading [often] more useful than extensive reading"(4); however,I can't lie and say I don't sometimes find Formalist theory full of "meaningless, pretentious jargon" (7).
On the other hand, though I agree with Jonathan Culler that "literature is a form of communication" (100) - and we should all be talking in one form or another - when we can hardly claim to know our own individual minds, how on earth can we judge the one true meaning for literary texts written by those we will probably never meet?
An even-handed statement, then, from Cleanth Brooks spoke with the loudest and clearest voice this week:
The various imports of a given work may well be worth studying. ...But such work, valuable and necessary as it may be, is to be distinguished from a criticism of the work itself" (28).
We must examine texts for what they add to the on-going human dialogue, but we must not forget to simply appreciate literature (and all forms of art) for what it may potentially add to the on-going dialogue we have with our own soul.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Rhetoric of Meaning
Now, I know I've lost it - I finished my reading days ago, and I'm still wandering around debating with myself about the value of rhetoric (Is it an art or a con man's best friend?) Then I decided (somewhere in my sleep, I think) that it's just another way we search (academically, of course) for meaning.
Whether we think of it as necessary to a life of civic duty, or we believe it's nothing but a distraction on the way to finding greater Truth it is actually just another metaphor available to define values we hold as inexplicably linked with the reason for our precarious human existence. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is it creation? Human relation? Discovering the soul's ultimate purpose?
I might even go so far as to argue (if I felt like arguing) that the theorist's style says much about those values. Maybe when we feel the need (like Cicero)to map each possible path an argument might take, we are actually trying to control outcomes, because our faith (in Ultimate Meaning) is held a little uneasily.
On the other hand, the iron-fisted approach of Luther and his rhetorical counter-part Peter Ramus could indicate an (subconscious?) awareness of the precarious hold they have (or at least that the masses had/have) on their own religious mythology (e.g. Invention had to be restricted because Scripture was the "final word," and scrutiny of Scripture reveals an undeniable fact: at the heart of Christianity lies faith -a quality intrinsically immune to rhetorical argument - you either have it or you don't).
Rhetoric, then, I have decided, is a scholar's way of defining personal meaning through academic discourse - and the beat goes on...
Whether we think of it as necessary to a life of civic duty, or we believe it's nothing but a distraction on the way to finding greater Truth it is actually just another metaphor available to define values we hold as inexplicably linked with the reason for our precarious human existence. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is it creation? Human relation? Discovering the soul's ultimate purpose?
I might even go so far as to argue (if I felt like arguing) that the theorist's style says much about those values. Maybe when we feel the need (like Cicero)to map each possible path an argument might take, we are actually trying to control outcomes, because our faith (in Ultimate Meaning) is held a little uneasily.
On the other hand, the iron-fisted approach of Luther and his rhetorical counter-part Peter Ramus could indicate an (subconscious?) awareness of the precarious hold they have (or at least that the masses had/have) on their own religious mythology (e.g. Invention had to be restricted because Scripture was the "final word," and scrutiny of Scripture reveals an undeniable fact: at the heart of Christianity lies faith -a quality intrinsically immune to rhetorical argument - you either have it or you don't).
Rhetoric, then, I have decided, is a scholar's way of defining personal meaning through academic discourse - and the beat goes on...
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Necessity is It's Mother
I wish I had the eloquence of Quintilian or Erasmus so that I might better express effectively the things that went through my mind with this week’s readings (even with the pages and pages of notes).
What I seemed to see was that the original arguments of rhetoric as art versus being just a practical instrument used in civic discourse had not much changed from the age of Cicero and Quintilian, and – arguably – even from that Aristotle and Isocrates. What seemed to happen, is that it would be “arranged” and “re-arranged” (pun intended), often by the giving and taking away again the gifts of invention.
In the era of horrific violence we now call the Renaissance, “the very abundance of lore then available led to the perception of a need for simplification” (Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 119-20). George Trebizond, very practically, decided that invention was a “skill…acquired through experience alone” (116), defining rhetoric as something “pragmatic” and “indifferent to morality” (115).
To Agricola, invention merely provided “maxims” which supplied “the criteria by which an argument may be taken as valid and true. He separated invention for dialectic, taking away any idea of probability and argument, leaving (so he believed) certainty and assertions (125). They needed certainty in a world turned upside down – then as the debate over free will heated, Peter Ramus stepped in…
Ramus restricted invention in his quest to raise Scripture the last word in all argument – making argument completely unnecessary, transforming rhetoric into nothing more than “the vehicle for the transmission of [God’s truth] to an audience unprepared to accept it” (130).
In the seventeenth century, rhetoric and religion became inextricably tied s the art focused on moving men’s minds through their emotions. Bartholomeus Keckermann defined invention as a way to reorganize traditional doctrines “that [made] sense of them in terms of what he [saw] as the primary goal of rhetoric… ‘to move the emotions and the will of men’” (qtd. in Conley, 158).
But, in a time of scientific inquiry and constant political unrest, philosophers like Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes saw rhetoric – and it’s handmaiden, invention – in much the same light most people (not in this class, of course) view it today, as a dangerous manipulation of men’s minds.
Apparently, the old adage: necessity is the mother of invention, is more rhetorical than I realized.
What I seemed to see was that the original arguments of rhetoric as art versus being just a practical instrument used in civic discourse had not much changed from the age of Cicero and Quintilian, and – arguably – even from that Aristotle and Isocrates. What seemed to happen, is that it would be “arranged” and “re-arranged” (pun intended), often by the giving and taking away again the gifts of invention.
In the era of horrific violence we now call the Renaissance, “the very abundance of lore then available led to the perception of a need for simplification” (Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 119-20). George Trebizond, very practically, decided that invention was a “skill…acquired through experience alone” (116), defining rhetoric as something “pragmatic” and “indifferent to morality” (115).
To Agricola, invention merely provided “maxims” which supplied “the criteria by which an argument may be taken as valid and true. He separated invention for dialectic, taking away any idea of probability and argument, leaving (so he believed) certainty and assertions (125). They needed certainty in a world turned upside down – then as the debate over free will heated, Peter Ramus stepped in…
Ramus restricted invention in his quest to raise Scripture the last word in all argument – making argument completely unnecessary, transforming rhetoric into nothing more than “the vehicle for the transmission of [God’s truth] to an audience unprepared to accept it” (130).
In the seventeenth century, rhetoric and religion became inextricably tied s the art focused on moving men’s minds through their emotions. Bartholomeus Keckermann defined invention as a way to reorganize traditional doctrines “that [made] sense of them in terms of what he [saw] as the primary goal of rhetoric… ‘to move the emotions and the will of men’” (qtd. in Conley, 158).
But, in a time of scientific inquiry and constant political unrest, philosophers like Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes saw rhetoric – and it’s handmaiden, invention – in much the same light most people (not in this class, of course) view it today, as a dangerous manipulation of men’s minds.
Apparently, the old adage: necessity is the mother of invention, is more rhetorical than I realized.
Monday, September 7, 2009
The More Things Change...
In “Topica”, Aristotle states that “reasoning is a demonstration when it proceeds from premises which are true and primary” (Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 111) – it seems those born with a mandate to speak, and to publish about speaking – those we might agree to call rhetoricians – all want to start from the same “true and primary” place, but they all end up someplace completely different (at least they think they do).
“All [men],” said Aristotle, “up to a certain point, endeavor to criticize or uphold an argument to defend themselves or to accuse” (117). Apparently, then, as now we must ask: Is the “natural” rhetor – born not only with a silver tongue but an inner compass pointing to true North (Kairos) – a “good man” as defined by Quintilian (“Institutio Oratoria,” Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 211)?
Or, is he a man “uninstructed and uncultivated,” who “always prefers utility to moral value” (Cicero, “De Partitione Oratoria, Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 193)?
If the latter is the case, does the man really lack a moral compass, or does his lack of education merely mean that when he speaks out – he lacks “oratory [effect]” (Cicero, “Brutus,” Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 175) to either defend himself or “accuse”?
Through the centuries it seems one of the few things the “Ancients” have been able to agree on is that only men (not women, who don’t count at all, of course) of a certain class can understand the depth of the questions surrounding rhetoric – and whether it is one of the most important arts in the whole of civilization or just a sham created by con artists – of a certain class, of course.
Monday, August 31, 2009
The Truth is Unknowable, So Question Everything
Thomas M. Conley, in Rhetoric in the European Tradition, teaches that "public discussion, where options were debated and consensus sought, was evidently the traditional way in which decisions were reached" (2). In other words, people have been talking each other into things for a very long time.
The type of rhetoric may change, so the story goes, but not the actual idea of "elaboration and rearticulation" (24). Yet, it is arguable that what we are looking at via the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates is not just four types of argument, but four distinct personality types persuading us toward their own particular worldviews.
Gorgias, for instance, with the heart of either a politician or a dictator (not sure which), may have called himself a teacher, but he taught the manipulation of audience - not the enlightenment, and a "unilateral transaction between an active speaker and a passive audience" (6) sounds a little like a drug deal to me.
Protagoras, to a lesser extent, and Isocrates, on the other hand, were truly teachers. For them it was not about manipulating the audience nor about finding some immutable Truth - which "for all practical purpose, was held by Protagoras to be inaccessible" (5). For the teacher-personality, rhetoric becomes a way to get everyone on the same civically-minded page.
Plato was a born philosopher. For him, rhetoric was finding and communicating that greater Truth grasped "only by the lover of wisdom who apprehends them as a result of divine inspiration or by recollection ... of them as they were viewed by the soul before birth" (8). I'm guessing he believed he was one such blessed "lover."
Aristotle, Plato's genius student-who-could, felt that rhetoric stood on its own as an art form: reason for reason's sake. Like Isocrates, and Protagoras before him, Aristotle looked at public discourse as the art of seeing possibilities (technically: "probabilities"). Unlike the teachers of art, however, Aristotle was the the artist, with the artist's devotion to product - and not what the product could necessarily bring to the community at large.
Rhetorical style then, I think it can be argued, is a reflection of the personality and the values of the rhetor. Conley's "four basic models" (24), may reflect four possible personality types of thinkers who often are instrumental in changing our world. I haven't yet decided if this thought comforts me or not.
The type of rhetoric may change, so the story goes, but not the actual idea of "elaboration and rearticulation" (24). Yet, it is arguable that what we are looking at via the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates is not just four types of argument, but four distinct personality types persuading us toward their own particular worldviews.
Gorgias, for instance, with the heart of either a politician or a dictator (not sure which), may have called himself a teacher, but he taught the manipulation of audience - not the enlightenment, and a "unilateral transaction between an active speaker and a passive audience" (6) sounds a little like a drug deal to me.
Protagoras, to a lesser extent, and Isocrates, on the other hand, were truly teachers. For them it was not about manipulating the audience nor about finding some immutable Truth - which "for all practical purpose, was held by Protagoras to be inaccessible" (5). For the teacher-personality, rhetoric becomes a way to get everyone on the same civically-minded page.
Plato was a born philosopher. For him, rhetoric was finding and communicating that greater Truth grasped "only by the lover of wisdom who apprehends them as a result of divine inspiration or by recollection ... of them as they were viewed by the soul before birth" (8). I'm guessing he believed he was one such blessed "lover."
Aristotle, Plato's genius student-who-could, felt that rhetoric stood on its own as an art form: reason for reason's sake. Like Isocrates, and Protagoras before him, Aristotle looked at public discourse as the art of seeing possibilities (technically: "probabilities"). Unlike the teachers of art, however, Aristotle was the the artist, with the artist's devotion to product - and not what the product could necessarily bring to the community at large.
Rhetorical style then, I think it can be argued, is a reflection of the personality and the values of the rhetor. Conley's "four basic models" (24), may reflect four possible personality types of thinkers who often are instrumental in changing our world. I haven't yet decided if this thought comforts me or not.
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